Podcast interview!

Film-maker, and self proclaimed "outlaw for love", Paul Kimball recently interviewed your's truly on his revived podcast, The Other Side of Truth. You can listen to the podcast here. Here's the description of the episode:

In this episode, I spend an hour chatting with Fortean researcher / blogger Tony Morrill, one of the bright youngsters out there who are interested in the world of the weird and the wacky. In an eclectic conversation where we throw in everything but the kitchen sink, we start off with some background information on Tony, and how he became interested in the paranormal at a young age, and then follow up with a back-and-forth on everything from UFOs to ghosts to Bigfoot. We also find time to pontificate / ruminate about posthumanism, tip our caps to the work of the late Mac Tonnies, Greg Bishop, and Nick Redfern, and "imagine the imagination factory" - all while keeping our tongues planted firmly in our cheeks. We even managed to reference a couple of cartoon characters we like, and I slipped in a musical interlude that is tangential to the point of being apropos of nothing, but somehow it still fits. This was a fun episode to record, and reminded me more than a bit of some of my past conversations with my pals in the "Cabal". Tony has his feet planted firmly on the ground, even as he has his eyes set to the sky. It's a good place to be!

I also suggest checking out his other latest interviews with Aaron John Gulyas and Walter Bosley. 

Additionally, you can also head over to Binnall of America in order to find my most recent Fortean Ramblings column entitled "We didn't start the fire". That's about all I have for now. Come back soon for shenanigans!

USOs

An extremely fascinating and often overlooked aspect of the UFO phenomena are USOs. USO, Unidentified Submerged Objects, are exactly what they sound like; namely underwater UFOs. Considering that over 70% of our planet is covered by water, it should come as no surprise that a large proportion of UFO sightings deal with bodies of water. Whether the craft is seen entering, exiting, or both, there are a large number of sightings that deal with this aspect of the phenomena. With this phenomenon in mind, a moderator over at AboveTopSecret made a thread that called for people to help him sift through the reports of USOs in order to pull out the really intriguing gems.

I realize that the thread, found here, is fairly old but it got me to thinking about this unusual phenomenon again. One of the sites that the thread mentions is a great repository of some of the USO reports that have been compiled together in chronological order. The website, that you can see here, is truly a one-stop shop for all things USO. The site is run by Carl Feindt, a retired aircraft engineer and ex-military man, and it has a wide variety of topics within the category of USOs for one to get lost in. The chronology of sightings is just one of the available resources that can be found there. I can't recommend the site highly enough.

For that matter, getting back to the ATS thread, I would recommend that you read through the posts there as many members picked some of the more interesting and intriguing cases of USO sightings. But if you're really interested in learning about this phenomenon I can't recommend Ivan T Sanderson's Invisible Residents: The Reality of UnderwaterUFOs highly enough. In Invisible Residents, Sanderson lays out his non-ETH theory of what might be behind the UFO/USO phenomena. Sanderson speculates on the existence of what he terms to be OINTS or Other Intelligences which represent a secretive parallel civilization that shares the planet with us, albeit in underwater bases. For Sanderson, UFOs represent this civilizations ability to reach the stars. He picks out more than one occurrence where people have sighted craft entering the ocean from what seems to be high up in the atmosphere and the reverse where the craft descends from high in the atmosphere only to “crash” into the water at high rates of speed.

Among these reported occurrences, Sanderson relates what may be one of the more widely known examples of a USO; The Shag Harbor incident. This case was even included in Paul Kimball's 2007 documentary BestEvidence: The Top Ten UFO cases coming in at a respectable #6. You can watch that clip below.

For those that can't view the clip allow me to sum up Shag Harbor for you. It began on the evening of October 4, 1967 on the tip of Nova Scotia, Canada in a small village called Shag Harbor. Five local teenagers were watching four flashing orange lights that were dancing in the sky suddenly dive at a 45 degree angle towards the water below. Initially believing that they were witnessing a plane that was about to crash, witness phoned the local authorities. Much to their surprise however, instead of crashing into the water the craft began to hover right above the surface for a distance of about a mile and a half. While the witness were phoning in to the police, RMCP Constable Ron Pound was making his way down Hwy #3 and was also watching the same amazing spectacle. He was under the impression that the four lights were in fact attached to the surface of one immense craft which he estimated to be some 60 ft in length.

Eventually NORAD and dive teams would be sent to the scene in order to investigate the occurrence only to leave empty handed concluding only that an object of “unknown origin” had crashed in the Harbor that night. It wasn't until the early 90's that the full story of what happened came out. MUFON investigators Chris Styles and Doug Ledger discovered by interviewing the original witnesses that there was a whole other part of the story that had yet to be revealed. From the UFOCasebook site:

The divers, along with other witnesses related these events: The object that dove into the waters of the harbor had soon left the Shag area, traveling underwater for about 25 miles to a place called Government Point, which was near a submarine detection base. The object was spotted on sonar there, and Naval vessels were positioned over it. After a couple of days, the military was planning a salvage operation, when a second UFO joined the first. Common belief at the time was that the second craft had arrived to render aid to the first.

At this time, the Navy decided to wait and watch. After about a week of monitoring the two UFOs, some of the vessels were called to investigate a Russian submarine which had entered Canadian waters. At this point, the two underwater craft made their move. They made their way to the Gulf of Maine, and putting distance between themselves and the chasing Navy boats, they broke the surface, and shot away into the skies.

Whatever USOs ultimately turn out to be, they are certainly a fascinating part of the entire UFO phenomena. They are an unappreciated part of the UFO picture that are not given the attention that they rightfully deserve. As is often said, we know more about the surface of the moon then our planet's oceans and seas. So if there does exist a parallel civilization that is terrestrial in origin, or even extraterrestrial origin, there would be no better place for them to set up shop for whatever purpose they are here to accomplish. To learn more, visit the Water UFOs site and definitely be sure to pick up Sanderson's book. Well until next time this is your friendly neighborhood Fortean reminding you to not only keep your eyes to the sky, but also on the oceans. You just never know which direction the next UFO sighting maybe coming from.

Random Mac Tonnies stuff

Thanks to the Daily Grail for tweeting this video earlier. It coincides with this New York Times article on the Digitial Afterlife. Discussed in the video and article is the late Mac Tonnies. The video is from the excellent (yet sad in a way) blog the Post-Mac Blues. Be sure to follow the link for the video its well worth the watch if you haven't seen it. In other Mac Tonnies related 'news', earlier today Ashley was image searching for some other pictures of him when she stumbled upon this:

Click for larger image

For whatever reason a picture of yours truly popped up during the image search. In all fairness, a picture of Paul Kimball, Greg Bishop, and Nick Redfern came up as well. I certainly don't think of myself in the same leagues as Tonnies. Although he is definitely a role model of mine, at least intellectually. And he has in many ways helped to inspire my outlook on the UFO phenomena specifically, but also most things Fortean in general. The saddest part for me is that I never got to correspond with him. I had heard of him through Binnall of America, Radio Misterioso, and the Paracast; but for whatever reason I never tried to reach out and talk to him.

This was partly to do with my being a Closet Anomalist and because I was under the mistaken impression that he and his compatriots were in many ways 'untouchable'. Sadly I found out too late that they aren't. Both Greg Bishop and Paul Kimball have been great supporters of my blog in it's relative infancy, through comments and suggestions and other things like this. It will probably be one of my greater regrets that I never got to know the guy who has influenced me in so many ways. I think that in a lot of ways, it was also Mac Tonnies that was the real inspiration for this blog.

So take some time today to remember Mac Tonnies.

-Tony 

 

Great Daily Resources (or these sites don't suck)

There have been a few posts in the past that have demonstrated how I got frustrated with the Alien/UFO section on ATS, which if you haven't read yet you can find here and here. The conclusion that I came to after the first of the posts was that I will look for resources that I enjoy and that actually teach me a thing or two. Because beyond hopefully coming to a better understanding about Fortean topics, I'm really hoping to actually learn something from this endeavor. Because, if I'm not learning anything, really whats the point? So with this in mind allow me to take this post to plug some of the better resources for learning that I have come across thus far. Among them are some of the biggest influences on my current model of how the Fortean functions. These are sites that I check on a daily basis.(Also they are in no particular order by the way, they are simply in whatever order that I happen to remember them in).

First up is a blog that I highly recommend people check out. Paul Kimball's The Other Side of Truth. This blog has a little bit of everything; UFOs, politics, religion, philosophy, and most importantly Paul Kimball's transformation as he stays on top of the Ufological/Paranormal world (but mostly as an observer). Paul Kimball is a film director whose credits are far too many to list, but the main one I would recommend (and do regularly) would be his 2007 film Best Evidence. It collects the 10 best UFO cases, and you would be hard pressed to disagree with the choices he has made.

Next is one I only discovered recently, and that is Who Forted?. This is a blog that takes a look at the realm of the Fortean in the only sane way you can, with a big sense of humor. They definitely seem to know there stuff as far as Fortean topics are concerned, but at the same time they have an excellent sense of humor about all of it. (For example check out their review of Syfy's Haunted Collector Reality TV series.) When not openly mocking people, which I mean come on who doesn't love that right?, they have some really cool stuff up on their site daily. Definitely a must visit daily site.

One of the better Paranormal podcasts in existence is Tim Binnall's Binnall of America. The show, which has been running now for I think 6 years, has literally interviewed everything one in the realm of esoterica that you can think of. And even some folks that you can't think of, or in my case may never have heard of until they came on Tim Binnall's show (Bruce Rux I'm looking at you). The show mostly comes out on a bi-weekly basis and is a definite must listen to.

In addition to an amazing series of interviews, the show also is home to some of the best writing on  fringe topics in the columns section of the site. Leslie, Regan Lee, Richard Thomas, Marla Pena, Richelle Hawks, Tina Sena, Bruce Priddy, and to a lesser degree yours truly the original Closet Anomalist Tony Morrill. With the exception of Bruce Priddy and myself, the other writers have archives that go back years that are full of all kinds of Fortean goodness.

On the topic of podcasts, Greg Bishop's Radio Misterioso is another must listen to. Especially now that Greg Bishop seems to have gotten his old show archives sorted out and seems to be adding them back to his site. Radio Misterioso is great because, in addition to some of the coolest music you are likely to ever hear, Greg Bishop interviews a lot of cool people. The conversations always seem to go in weird and unexpected places, and I can easily say that this show has introduced me to many of the people that have shaped my understanding and reasoning on Fortean topics. Definitely should check on this one daily.

Along those same lines, Greg Bishop writes for another site that some BOA writers and Nick Redfern all contribute to. UFO Mystic is a great place to visit at least semi-daily for all sorts of great writings by Nick Redfern, Greg Bishop, and a seemingly never ending supply of contributing writers. All in all a great site to visit.

As a general all around great resource for news, there are actually two that tie. First is Daily Grail, which isn't just a news site but that is like my favorite part of it. Seriously I check there daily for a great list of crazy Fortean news stories. The second one is very similar to this, The Anomalist. Like Daily Grail, the Anomalist collects all kinds of random Fortean goodies for you the reader to enjoy. You know now that I think about it, Fortean Times also has this same kind of feature. A Daily roundup of weird news.

Well that about wraps it up. The sites that I have listed above are the ones I visit on a daily basis in order to get my Fortean fix. If you have any suggestions for sites that I should visit, please let me know.

Alien Resistance Movement?

Short post tonight Fortean fans. I will be back tomorrow with your regularly scheduled posting stuffs. In the meantime please show your support for Beyond Best Evidence giving what you can. Also I will leave this here for your enjoyment.

Alien Resistance Movement

Words can't begin to describe this group. Just do yourself a favor and check it out. OK well until next time this is your friendly neighborhood Fortean Philosopher saying, do your part to help fund the greatest UFO movie ever!

Put your money where your mouth is! I did.

It is likely painfully clear to any regular reader of Forteania, that I am not the world's biggest fan of so called, with no apparent sense of irony, 'mainstream' Ufology. I mean one only has to look at literally any of the posts I have made on this blog to figure that much out. Along those lines I am constantly on the lookout for anything that can offer a sliver of hope for the quagmire that is Ufology. As I have pointed out ad nauseum, we need to move past the "UFOs=aliens" paradigm we have been saddled with for the past 60 plus years.

With all of this in mind, I was extremely happy to hear that Paul Kimball was working with Tim Binnall in order to produce a 'sequel' to his amazing Best Evidence documentary which, as I have pointed out a number of times on Twitter, is one of the best UFO documentaries that I have ever seen. Best Evidence, which Paul Kimball has put up for free on Vimeo (find it here, seriously watch it then come back and finish this post), is an excellent film that through ten amazing UFO cases does a superb job of demonstrating that there is, in fact, an objective (hah that's not a loaded word) reality to the UFO phenomena.

Once we understand that there is a reality to the UFO subject, which probably most of you reading this have come to that conclusion already, where do we take it from there? The main answer for years has been the ETH, which contrary to what I may sometime indicate on this blog, is a valid hypothesis. But it is not the only one, and this is the problem that the newest project that Kimball and Binnall are working on seeks to solve. In Beyond Best Evidence, they seek to give the viewer all of the different options for what is behind the UFO enigma. ETs? Yep they are gonna be in the film with the respective ETH guys, like Kevin Randle and Stan Friedman. Ultraterrestrials/Interdimensionals? You bet. Hell even the Cryptoterrestrials will make an appearance.

Essentially the hope is that this documentary will allow you the viewer, to understand that the UFO problem is far more complicated (in an exciting way) than just alien visitor's from Zeta Reticuli. So what can you do, oh loyal readers of Forteania? I'm glad that you asked. As it stands Paul Kimball and Tim Binnall are trying to raised $25,000 in order to help fund this project. As of this posting they have only reached $1580, but you can help. If you, like me, are ready to make a change for the positive in Ufology or just to get people to be more open to a myriad of possibilities, please support this cause in anyway you can. Unfortunately the fund-raising part only has 3 days left at this moment, but I think we could do it if we all pitch in.

So like the title says, I put my money where my mouth is will you? If so head to the Indie GoGo page for the film to donate whatever you can! For more information on the project from the gentleman running it, check out the latest Binnall of America podcast up now to learn more about this film. And after that seriously go watch Best Evidence. Hopefully together we can make this documentary a reality, sooner rather than later. Well that's all I have for now, check back later for more Fortean shenanigans.

No post tonight sorry!

My dad is in the hospital (he's OK it seems), so obviously that took precedence over the blog tonight. Sorry guys and gals, but I will be back tomorrow night with all sorts of Fortean goodness. 

 It's OK Michael I will be back tomorrow night I promise. In other news check Paul Kimball out on the latest episode of Binnall of America here.

Definition of Insanity?

I have often heard that an unofficial definition of insanity is repeatedly doing the same task yet expecting a different out come each time. As an example jumping off a roof hoping that eventually you will be able to fly. Well I have recently decided that I must be insane. I have related a few times on this blog that I on occasion frequent the forums over at AboveTopSecret (ATS). The only topics that I tend to gravitate and respond in are typically the UFO/Alien topics. I mean 'go with what you know' right?

Well with that in mind I went to a thread entitled 'UFOs are Alien: Evidence!'. Now I just couldn't resist going in to that thread and reading what evidence was going to be offered. I was really excited, not because I thought the evidence was going to be particularly compelling (turns out I was right), but because I knew it was going to be eye roll worthy. The original poster opens with this phrase:

A new theory emerged, that the flying discs (that we call UFOs) are all made by our Governments. It is true that our Governments are now able to replicate 'UFOs', but the originals belong to extraterrestrial beings.

Before photography was invented, humans had the cave paintings, cuneiform depictions, written texts and spoken tales of UFOs and extraterrestrial beings.

I think this is pretty good evidence that UFOs are mainly of Extraterrestrial origins. Long before we were able to use 'anti-gravity' flying vehicles, our ancestors witnessed them in the skies.

As far as posts go on ATS its about par for the course. I wasn't entirely sure what the author was trying to convey. I thought that basically he was saying that because we had strange cave paintings and other such early human images of strange things, that they must by definition be ET. Knowing me as you probably do by now, especially if you have been reading this blog for some time, I responded with the well reasoned (of course I might be biased) post below: (Also keep in mind I was posting from work so my initial response was a little short)

Well just because there might have been advanced technologies in antiquity does not necessarily make it ET. It could just as likely have been an advanced human civilization that is currently unknown or suspected to have existed (think Atlantis or Lemuria).

Great response right? I know I'm a genius. All joking aside my point was that simply because we find depictions of what we interpret to be 'flying objects' on rock walls or whatever, doesn't necessarily somehow indicate an ET presence in our prehistoric Earth. Well it wasn't long until the original author was ready to offer a rebuttal. His response:

                        Why, because ETs don't exist?

Now, I don't think that I'm 'in' Ufology the same way that say Greg Bishop, Nick Redfern, or Paul Kimball are. But I imagine that response was akin to being called a disinfo agent or a skeptic/debunker. I have to be completely honest, I was a little flattered. I don't think that is what my response had said, or to be more accurate it wasn't what I was trying to imply. Much like with my posts on here about the UFO phenomena, I just don't think you necessarily have to shout ET every time something strange is brought up. Which brings me to my reply to his question:

No but you don't necessarily have to evoke the 'ET' meme in order to explain things like ancient cave paintings. In his book Supernatural Graham Hancock explores the possibility that rock art was created while under the influence of hallucinogens such as ayahuasca. That wasn't to say that what they were seeing wasn't 'real' but that it didn't exist in our realm of 'reality'. Of course the likelihood of their being ET intelligences in our universe is almost an inevitability. And I am even a fan of the Paleo-contact Theory. However I feel that there is far too much emphasis on the ET part of the ETH. For instance perhaps the technologies that were witnessed by our ancestors could have been of the Cryptoterrestrial civilization that was proposed by the late Mac Tonnies. Sometimes I fell that people need to be more willing to think outside of the 'ET' box. Just my 2 cents.

That isn't anything you haven't heard me say on this blog a million times (bit of hyperbole there for you). And it has gotten to the point where I have said it on ATS to where I almost blue in the face. The original author of the thread (as of now when I am typing this) has yet to reply to my response. Perhaps he gave up, or he wasn't going to change his mind anyway. Which brings me to the point of this post. I have repeatedly stated on ATS my views and opinions on the UFO phenomena and its possible origins to absolutely no avail. And after my final response in this thread here:

Yeah it was the works of Jacques Vallee and John Keel that really got me to open my mind to the multitude of possibilities that may exist out there. You're right in that some UFOs could or even probably are an ET presence of some form or another. The problem as I see it though is that we have been thinking that it was Aliens for over 60 yrs now in this field (you know at least the majority Vallee and Keel notwithstanding) and yet we haven't really learned anything at all. For reasons like that I was really attracted to Mac Tonnies' book, which of course was just an option and even he didn't necessarily believe that was the 'Answer'. Because whatever the ultimate 'answer' ends up being it will likely be something so far beyond our current comprehension that we may have to evolve more to even hope to understand it.

I have decided that I'm not really learning anything from that website, at least not by contributing anyway. I'm not arrogant enough to think I have the right answers or anything. I just hope that I am at least looking at this phenomena with the right attitude. I think that one reason I haven't won any fans over on that site is that I refuse to be pigeonholed. I'm not a believer, but at the same time I'm not a disbeliever. I am simply a Fortean Philosopher. To me the answer, if we can ever even find it let alone understand it, probably lies somewhere in the middle of the believer/disbeliever dichotomy.

And so for the foreseeable future I am done with that website, I don't begrudge the people that would go to it and I still would recommend those that are interested in Alternative News/Views check it out. Just be advised that the UFO/Alien part suffers greatly from the True Believer vs Pseudo-Skeptic thing that much of the Ufological 'field' suffers from. So as always I am left with posting my rantings and ravings here, listening to the few good podcasts that exist out there (RadioMisterioso and Binnall of America), and talking on Twitter to the one person I consider to be friend in this 'field', Paul Kimball. Thats all my bitching for tonight, so until next time I will leave you with a (probably) familiar Charles Fort quote.

“I conceive of nothing, in religion, science or philosophy, that is more than the proper thing to wear, for a while."